When I worked out here as a carpenter one winter, the little, green market (below) was still open and hanging on. I turned thirty that winter.

Today the building barely stands. I was thinking about how quickly the world is changing...and then I realized that I did that work in that town a quarter century ago. Once that seemed a lifetime; now it feels like last week.

Typing this this morn I just finally "got" Washington Irving's tale of Rip Van Winkle.

I don't know much about photography but these photos are top quality (for me). Nice to read about your reminiscing.

Thanks! All I know about photography is to wander around obsessively looking for cool stuff and then to point my phone in that general direction.

Oh, and to throw out 99% of every shot I take.

You do a damned good job of wandering around IMHO.

Now, the throwing out part might be the secret. My dad loved taking pictures, which he was truly pretty bad at. He liked slides, which unfortunately were a bit pricey for our small farmer economy....he'd perhaps go through a 36 exposure roll in a year.....but would only throw one out unless it was totally black or otherwise unrecognizable. Spent too much for them to just throw them away. He liked to have slide shows for the relatives' visits, and my teenage self would cringe at some of the slides I'd see every darned time.... "Now if you look back there, that little brown dot is an antelope!" I got to be his projectionist, and I was a bit too trigger happy and got chastised regularly for not giving his audience time to appreciate his art.

After he passed I had a field day tossing out a bunch of his crap slides...though I treasure the accidentally great ones...

I don't know much about photography but these photos are top quality (for me). Nice to read about your reminiscing.

Thanks! All I know about photography is to wander around obsessively looking for cool stuff and then to point my phone in that general direction.

Oh, and to throw out 99% of every shot I take.

You do a damned good job of wandering around IMHO.

Now, the throwing out part might be the secret. My dad loved taking pictures, which he was truly pretty bad at. He liked slides, which unfortunately were a bit pricey for our small farmer economy....he'd perhaps go through a 36 exposure roll in a year.....but would only throw one out unless it was totally black or otherwise unrecognizable. Spent too much for them to just throw them away. He liked to have slide shows for the relatives' visits, and my teenage self would cringe at some of the slides I'd see every darned time.... "Now if you look back there, that little brown dot is an antelope!" I got to be his projectionist, and I was a bit too trigger happy and got chastised regularly for not giving his audience time to appreciate his art.

After he passed I had a field day tossing out a bunch of his crap slides...though I treasure the accidentally great ones...

In the last couple years my packrat uncle passed away and my ma moved into an assisted care place, which, combined, led to my generation "inheriting" not only all my ma's photos and all my grandparents' photos but also boxes upon boxes of our great (and great great!) grandparents' photos.

The albums of complete strangers (that is: my ancestors) doing the Grand European Tour c. 1905 are kinda cool (as in "cool for about five minutes once every 20 years), but man o' man it's a cruel reminder that no one really wants to look at yer old photos.

Or inherit your shell or rock collection.

And yet it feels so utterly wrong tossing that stuff out.

Sentimental creatures we are.

On the other hand, my very shy grandmother left behind about 100 watercolors, none of which were museum quality, but now we all have a few of her pics up, which is pretty cool.

Last edited by tdrake on Tue Nov 06, 2018 8:29 am; edited 1 time in total

In the last century. many, many years ago, one of my migrant worker jobs was helicoptering National Geographic photographers into very, VERY, remote areas.
They had several foot lockers of film. You, know that stuff that came in little canisters. I complemented them on the work and great photos. They said it was not that big on deal. "On this shot we will take around 14,000 photos and use between 7 and 14. Even the monkeys we are photographing could come up with a good picture with that many."

However, in the moment they are all great photos as all of yours Mr. Drake....in this moment. And to be honest, in many more moments in the future. You do good work.

In the last century. many, many years ago, one of my migrant worker jobs was helicoptering National Geographic photographers into very, VERY, remote areas.
They had several foot lockers of film. You, know that stuff that came in little canisters. I complemented them on the work and great photos. They said it was not that big on deal. "On this shot we will take around 14,000 photos and use between 7 and 14. Even the monkeys we are photographing could come up with a good picture with that many."

However, in the moment they are all great photos as all of yours Mr. Drake....in this moment. And to be honest, in many more moments in the future. You do good work.

Dunno what's the most interesting part of this -- all that film for so many shots or your helicoptering gig!

Thanks for all your support, y'all! I still feel like taking pics is really just an excuse to look for cool stuff.

Doubt there are many more rides left to this year, but the clouds broke briefly on Sunday afternoon and for a bit the temps broke the 40 degree barrier, so, after half an hour of piling on a dozen layers and warming up the scoot in the sun until I could finally get 'er started, I headed out for a brisk hour and a half.

Woulda been nice to catch one more sunset but the last half hour was plenty brisk as it was: 35 degrees as I pulled in the driveway.

Truly nothing new on this ride but Imma posting a few pics to remind myself in the dead of winter that a lil November riding can be found.

Out for a chilly, really chilly, 103 miles, which proved a wee bit too ambitious - --- out too far, too late -- and as the sun slipped behind the hills I was simultaneously punished with plummeting temps and a rewarded with stunning skies...which I could not really capture on film.

The long view, facing East.

This view hasn't changed a 100 years. Bethany Lutheran to the left.

Bethany Lutheran. Signs say est. 1895 by a group of settlers who moved here directly from Norway.

First blush of winter wheat amid all the otherwise varied but dull shades of summer brown.

I'm doing my late winter/early spring riding vicariously. My first chance at riding won't be until April....that is, if I've healed properly. I think if I tried to mount up before that my wife would break my other leg.

And, yeah, "relatively no snow" after the 18" we had in our yard just ten days ago!

But still froze me keister off -- or my mitts, actually; I miss the V's heated grips -- riding dirt roads in the rain y'day afternoon, out where the snow did, indeed, still linger, tho I did encounter my first "river crossing" where it was flooding and washing out a road.

No complaints, tho, as I was certain we would be neck deep in the flooding that wound up drowning so much of the midwest.

Vespa says typical midlife crisis, chasing a younger redhead, and that I'll be back when my hip starts acting up. ...tho she did get a new carb and tune up last week, so enter the polygamous years.

So, I don't want to clog this space with pictures of a dual-sport Honda, but...

In the two and a half days I've had the Honda I've now logged 105 miles , all in the eves either after the 8 hour drive dragging it home from Ellensburg WA or after work, in the cold, in the rain, and all but just a few of those miles on dirt roads.

And that's really the deal -- after three years and 17,000 local miles, nearly every one of those 105 miles have been on roads I've never seen before, and I haven't started to scratch the surface of the thousands of miles of farm and fire roads that define this area, not to speak of the state.

As much as I love the beauty of machines -- and I really unapologetically do! -- I've found searching for the new in the nearby has become an equal obsession, and it offers something I'm otherwise not very good at: hope. It's a small, probably meaningless and very selfish hope -- that I'll simply see something I've never seen before -- but it still focuses my brain on the future, what might be, rather than on the past, where there is often a lot of regret or nostalgia.

I gotta find the quote in "Zen" where Pirsig says something about the immortality of motocyclists -- how we don't fear death because it is forever out in front of us and so riding just keeps pushing it forward...and in that idea rests the seeds of this "hope" I've rediscovered: a way of concentrating on what might be around the next corner rather than my usual obsession with what might have or should have been.

Appropriately, then, I discovered a new road (ironically, paved, and I can ride it on the Vespa!) that brought me to a new cemetery.

And also appropriate that it was cold enough out by the time I found it that my phone battery died after three shots.

Yeah, as always visiting these sites reminds me that the two things we take for granted more than any other is that we won't have to frequently bury our own children and we'll probably live past forty.

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